Most health care institutions make extensive use of computers for record keeping and patient service. In fact, most health care providers rely on more than on type of computerized system. Typically providers of computerized systems for health care providers have tended to focus on one or more aspects of the total automation needs of health care providers and thus there are often at a single health care institution separate computer systems for billing and accounting, laboratory, in- or out-patient scheduling or tracking, medical records, appointments and others. Some such different systems may be different software packages while others may involve entirely different computer hardware systems as well. In some cases, all systems in an organization are linked by a network, but such a network connection alone does not ensure that the systems can cooperatively exchange information among the divergent systems in the network. Often the different systems communicate by way of one or more software interfaces that must be custom built for each pair of systems which must communicate, even on the same network. It is also a trend in the health care industry in general that different organizations can cross-refer or partner in one or more areas or for certain types of patients, and thus different organizations with entirely different computer systems and networks find a need to share patient data.
An emerging driving application for computerization in healthcare is electronic medical records. Completely computerized medical records can dramatically assist in the intelligence of health care service delivery to patients. However, to be completely effective, the prompt sharing of critical patient information amongst the caregivers who might treat a particular patient becomes important. This needs extends both within a large health care organization as well as to allied health care providers, such as referral sources in outside organizations, who may refer in patients and who already possess significant clinical information about the patients. This need also arises in the exchange of information between distinct healthcare organizations, whether operating similar or dissimilar computer systems, who are also called on from time to time to efficiently exchange information about patients who need treatment at other institutions. There are no standards widely in use at this time to facilitate the exchange or dissemination of clinical or other information of this type.